The general goal of the research is to study the acquisition and development of distinctive semantic-syntactic structures in African American English. The 18 month, longitudinal investigation will focus on two types of structures, go copula and invariant be, in the language of twelve working-class African American children, representing both genders and two age groups: 3.0 to 4.6 and 4.6 to 6.0. The key aims of the study are to: (1) determine the meaning of go copula and invariant be in the children's language; (2) describe changes that occur over time in go copula and invariant be syntactic constructions; and (3) determine the frequency of occurrence of go copula and invariant be in the language samples. The long-term objective of the research is to expand language development research on African American children. A practical goal is to utilize results from the study to improve language assessment and intervention for these children in health-related fields, e.g., speech and language pathology, child development and special education.